Seriously..

[totallymaxed]

I was looking around New Egg and found a perfect motherboard for my MD (I found a good one but I want it to be small) but than I remember reading a thread that AMD processors don't work well with LinuxMCE.. Or was that ATI graphics? I get them both confused since it's now one company.

Motherboards with AMD processors (32 bit ones at least) are fine... but ATI graphics cards or motherboards that use ATI on-boards are problematic. Having said that one my home MD's has an old ATI 9200 card in it and runs UI1 and TV/Video really well.

[Clint07]

Oh thats perfect since this has a NVidia GeForce 6100 on board so it should have UI2 awesome!

[1audio]

I saw a lot of discussion on using WiFi for wireless access to media. Here is a short summary of my testing (and similar to the published results of a respected engineering magazine)

1) WiFi is fine for audio, but not video. Same room you can do SD. Multiroom forget it.
2) 802.11n: too soon to bet on anything. It may or may not work.
3) Powerline- if your house is compatible (important) it can support 1-2 HD streams. Forget booting across it. way too slow for that. (I have tried. . .) My house is allergic to all of the powerline stuff. However I have seen it work in a few houses. I would go with HomeplugAV, just because it has the most momemtum in the US. DS2 in Europe and Panasonic in Asia. But they are all expensive- approx $100 per connection.
4) UWB will just make it to the other end of the room.
5) Wiring isn't that expensive or difficult. I can get a pro here (San Francisco) to pull wires for well less than $200 a connection and a little shopping is closer to $75. Other areas can for $50 or less. its just not too difficult to do. Look for an alarm installer looking to moonlight. And its far more reliable and secure.

I have seen a system using WiFi deliver problem free HD over 100'. However everything in it was very special and not compatible.

[totallymaxed]

I saw a lot of discussion on using WiFi for wireless access to media. Here is a short summary of my testing (and similar to the published results of a respected engineering magazine)

1) WiFi is fine for audio, but not video. Same room you can do SD. Multiroom forget it.
2) 802.11n: too soon to bet on anything. It may or may not work.
3) Powerline- if your house is compatible (important) it can support 1-2 HD streams. Forget booting across it. way too slow for that. (I have tried. . .) My house is allergic to all of the powerline stuff. However I have seen it work in a few houses. I would go with HomeplugAV, just because it has the most momemtum in the US. DS2 in Europe and Panasonic in Asia. But they are all expensive- approx $100 per connection.
4) UWB will just make it to the other end of the room.
5) Wiring isn't that expensive or difficult. I can get a pro here (San Francisco) to pull wires for well less than $200 a connection and a little shopping is closer to $75. Other areas can for $50 or less. its just not too difficult to do. Look for an alarm installer looking to moonlight. And its far more reliable and secure.

I have seen a system using WiFi deliver problem free HD over 100'. However everything in it was very special and not compatible.

I think as you say peoples experience with WiFi will vary. My experience having used 802.11G in all our setups since early Pluto days is that in most locations it works but is not perfect if you are streaming Standard Def TV or Audio to a laptop running Windows. We use 85mbit and 200mbit Powerline line boxes (mostly HomePlug) and again these can work very nicely and PXE booting from even 85mbit units is fine. But I agree some house wiring will just trip powerline up and it can take a lot of work and extra Powerline boxes to route around these problems... by which time pulling cat5 might have been easier and cheaper. I guess you just have to use the approach that best suits you... as each has its place.

[1audio]

Boot over powerline? I'm impressed. When we tried it we gave up after 15 min.

[totallymaxed]

Boot over powerline? I'm impressed. When we tried it we gave up after 15 min.

I am writing this to you from a machine pxe booted over 85mbit powerline from my home lmce system :-)

[bulek]

Boot over powerline? I'm impressed. When we tried it we gave up after 15 min.

I am writing this to you from a machine pxe booted over 85mbit powerline from my home lmce system :-)

Hi,

could you please post more info to wiki about such setup ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

[totallymaxed]

Boot over powerline? I'm impressed. When we tried it we gave up after 15 min.

I am writing this to you from a machine pxe booted over 85mbit powerline from my home lmce system :-)

Hi,

could you please post more info to wiki about such setup ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

Well there is not really much to it... Powerline adapter linked to port on my router.... 2nd Powerline box plugged into mains outlet behind MD with rj45 into back of MD. Set MD box to PXE boot in bios... and restart. Thats it really... the only gotchas are to do with the house wiring and devices like fridges/freezers that might inject some interference into the mains.

[majkaj]

Just a quick question,

Will 256 mb of ram will be ok for an MD? or should I splurge on a 512 mb? Thanks!

I use thin clients at work on Kubuntu/LTSP (http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/WebHome).   I think that LinuxMCE is using the same technology.  The memory requirements of the CORE/Server is 500meg to 1 gig if you are running around 10 thin clients.  The thin client memory requirements are VERY low... on the order of 32 meg to 128 meg.  I have booted up 64 meg thin clients and the response is almost the same as a full blown computer.

Note that in the thin client / Core setup , all the computer processing is being done on the SERVER... not on the client.    I have not tested out thin clients with LinuxMCE , yet, but I will post the results after I do.  I would suggest that you try a thin client with 256 mb of ram before purchasing more ram. 

Mike

[Clint07]

Just a quick question,

Will 256 mb of ram will be ok for an MD? or should I splurge on a 512 mb? Thanks!

I use thin clients at work on Kubuntu/LTSP (http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/WebHome).   I think that LinuxMCE is using the same technology.  The memory requirements of the CORE/Server is 500meg to 1 gig if you are running around 10 thin clients.  The thin client memory requirements are VERY low... on the order of 32 meg to 128 meg.  I have booted up 64 meg thin clients and the response is almost the same as a full blown computer.

Note that in the thin client / Core setup , all the computer processing is being done on the SERVER... not on the client.    I have not tested out thin clients with LinuxMCE , yet, but I will post the results after I do.  I would suggest that you try a thin client with 256 mb of ram before purchasing more ram. 

Mike

I'll try and and do 64 - 128 megs. Webhome looks pretty interesting and so does Powerline! Wow! I never knew such a thing existed!! I'm thinking of buying that instead of networking my house since its a BIG P.I.N.A. with forwarding ports, changing ips, disabling the DCHP server blah blah the list goes on =/... and even some companies have proprietary hardware, so you have to buy their router & your adapters for it to work.. so hmm thanks =)!

[Clint07]

Anyone still know about if the Via Motherboard with the S3 Unichrome Graphics card can do UI2? I've seen a couple of people on the forums  who have said that they have the GFX card.. anyone?

[totallymaxed]

Just a quick question,

Will 256 mb of ram will be ok for an MD? or should I splurge on a 512 mb? Thanks!

I use thin clients at work on Kubuntu/LTSP (http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/WebHome).   I think that LinuxMCE is using the same technology.  The memory requirements of the CORE/Server is 500meg to 1 gig if you are running around 10 thin clients.  The thin client memory requirements are VERY low... on the order of 32 meg to 128 meg.  I have booted up 64 meg thin clients and the response is almost the same as a full blown computer.

Note that in the thin client / Core setup , all the computer processing is being done on the SERVER... not on the client.    I have not tested out thin clients with LinuxMCE , yet, but I will post the results after I do.  I would suggest that you try a thin client with 256 mb of ram before purchasing more ram. 

Mike

With lmce the PXE booted MD is handling all the processing in its local processor/memory and not in the Core. In essence the Core is acting like a local hard drive to the MD... it just has less performance. However we have found that the performance of PXE booted MD's really excellent and it is only in very rare circumstances that you see any performance issues. After using PXe booted MD hardware with Pluto and now with lmce we have a lot of experience with the hardware and memory requirements - our standard is to fit 512mb of ram as this seems to optimum currently. In some situations where for example you were using the PXE booted MD to maybe capture analog video from say an external satellite or cable box while still playing audio or TV/video locally you might look at fitting 1gb RAM to allow for more buffering in local RAM.

[majkaj]

>>With lmce the PXE booted MD is handling all the processing in its local processor/memory and not in the Core. In essence the Core is acting
 >>like a local hard drive to the MD... it just has less performance.

Thank you for correcting me.  I ASSUMED that lmce was using the Linux Terminal Server Project  LTSP.  Because of this assumtion, my advice about the amount of ram needed for the "thin client" is, of course, not valid. 

Mike

[richardj]

I have a wireless router and a wireless extender ... brick walls are a bitch.  Signal to my lounge, etc are poor.  I have a single story house, im keen to try and put the wireless extender in the ceiling ... signal should travel better through the soft thin ceilings ...

Lan over power is interesting, here in south africa we have 240v ... so will have to find devices that support this.

How much bandwidth does high def video streaming use ?  ie. how many bits per second ?  I can play with my network and test data transfer rates through the house before investing any real time or money in one solution ?

[totallymaxed]

I have a wireless router and a wireless extender ... brick walls are a bitch.  Signal to my lounge, etc are poor.  I have a single story house, im keen to try and put the wireless extender in the ceiling ... signal should travel better through the soft thin ceilings ...

Lan over power is interesting, here in south africa we have 240v ... so will have to find devices that support this.

How much bandwidth does high def video streaming use ?  ie. how many bits per second ?  I can play with my network and test data transfer rates through the house before investing any real time or money in one solution ?

1080p takes about 13mbit's a second at 30fps... roughly